Home and Community Support Services (HCSS)

What is HCSS?

HCSS provides personal support for injured clients, for example overnight support and help with showering and dressing; and household support such as helping to prepare meals or home cleaning and child care.

Price increase for Home and Community Support Services

From 1 May prices for Home and Community Support Services (HCSS) will increase for non-contracted providers.

Find out more by viewing the question and answer sheet (PDF 46K).

Reasons for changes to HCSS

At present there is no purchasing framework for HCSS that sits across different provider types (eg agencies and private providers) and client groups (eg short-term clients, long-term clients and serious injury clients). This has resulted in an inconsistent and piecemeal approach to the way ACC purchases HCSS, and pressure both from clients and providers to purchase and provide services in a more consistent and transparent manner.

Also, HCSS is the biggest upward driver of ACC’s liability for social rehabilitation, which currently accounts for 42% of total ACC Scheme liability. In the 2010/11 financial year ACC spent $176 million on HCSS for around 18,000 claims. Over half of this expenditure is for services provided by contracted suppliers (61%) and, although low in claims volume, a significant proportion of overall expenditure is for serious injury (SI) clients (86%).

Efficient and effective management of these services is therefore critical to ongoing scheme sustainability.

The purpose of the HCSS redesign project is therefore to work with the sector to achieve the following goals:

Purchase HCSS using a robust, competitive and transparent funding model. Under this model, pricing will be set at a level that enables clients to secure appropriate care, and provides value for money for the Scheme within the confines of current funding levels
Effectively manage clients throughout the continuum of high cost/complex/simple care in the most efficient way possible
Provide quality services in a flexible manner that meet clients’ injury-related needs and incentivise clients to reach and sustain independence
Establish clear monitoring and reporting practices and robust outcome measures for providers and clients (where their care is organised privately) to enable ACC to ensure effectiveness of service delivery.

Consultation

Consultation with the HCSS sector and with ACC staff has been a key component of the work that has been undertaken to date.

A number of workshops have been undertaken with the HCSS sector, and other external interested parties, around the service design. The first round of sector workshops kicked off in late June 2011 and discussed the high level principles of the service design for HCSS. These were well attended by providers and a number of ACC staff.

Provider and staff workshops were also conducted in early October to inform the project team regarding the development of the high level service design. Input received from these workshops was critical to informing the service design, and the overall feedback from providers and staff involved in this process was very positive.

Following approval of the high level service design on 1 November 2011 another series of workshops for providers and other interested parties was carried out in late November 2011. These workshops provided an opportunity to present the finalised high level service design, give participants an understanding of ACC’s approach to pricing for these services, outline the procurement process that will be undertaken in early 2012, and introduce and get feedback about potential Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for HCSS.

Where are we up to?

Service design

The high level service design for HCSS has now been developed and was approved on the 1 November 2011. This was a significant milestone for the project and gave us the green light to begin mapping out the detailed service design.

The new service design will see HCSS being delivered under two streams:

Return to Independence stream
Maximise Independence stream.

Return to Independence

The Return to Independence stream is for clients who have a time limited need for support while they recover from their injury. The service will assist these clients to achieve their pre-injury level of independence within their every day lives.

These clients may be managed by the Short Term Claims Centres or Branches (including Sensitive Claims) depending on the complexity of their injury and the risk factors or barriers associated with their claim. They may also include clients with long term or serious injuries who require a time limited, outcome focused service to regain independence in their everyday lives.

The key features of this service will include:

The ability for District Health Boards to refer clients with low complexity and/or short term home support needs directly to HCSS suppliers for an ‘initial support package’
Collaborative discharge planning that includes ACC, DHB and HCSS suppliers for clients with complex medical or psychosocial needs, or likely to require a high intensity of services on discharge
Appropriate home support services delivered flexibly to fit with the client’s normal daily routine and that will allow for a reduction in support as the client moves towards independence
Early exception reporting to ACC for clients who will not achieve the agreed outcomes within the given timeframes.

We are planning for the services to be purchased as a total number of support hours over a defined time period, with child care and sleepovers purchased as add-on services.

Maximise Independence

The Maximise Independence stream is for clients who will have a long term need for support to live their everyday lives. Only clients managed by the Branch, Recover Independence Service, Sensitive Claims or National Serious Injury Service would be eligible for this service.

The key features of this service will include:

a partnership approach to goal setting and service planning between ACC, the client and the HCSS supplier
services that support the clients movement towards maximum independence delivered flexibly with a focus on supporting the client with family/whanau, vocational and community participation
regular reporting to ACC to ensure progress towards goals.

The service is expected to be purchased as a total number of support hours per quarter (or six months for clients with stable needs), with childcare and sleepovers purchased as add-on services.

Frequently asked questions

Several sets of answers to frequently asked questions have been prepared and are available here:

Sector updates

Several HCSS Sector Updates have been sent since the start of the project. Copies can be found here.

Contracted (HCSS) Suppliers (PDF 134K) provides the most up to date list of suppliers who currently hold an HCSS contract as at 16 March 2012.

Information about the Request for Proposal (RFP)

The RFP went live on the Government Electronic Tendering System (GETS) on Thursday 1 March. The link to the GETS website is www.gets.govt.nz.

The RFP for HCSS has been issued on ACC’s e-sourcing solution ‘Ariba’. In order to view and respond to this RFP you will require a supplier login to the Ariba system.

Ariba supplier log in

To request a supplier log in, email supplier@acc.co.nz. Please state clearly in the subject line ‘HCSS RFP’.

The following information is required in the body of the email:

Company’s legal name ( not your trading name)
Current ACC vendor ID (if held)
Current Master Agreement number [HWxxxx] (if held)
Physical address
Phone number
Name of the nominated contact person completing the RFP
Nominated contact person’s phone number and email address.

You will be provided with a User ID and password within 5-10 working days. This will give you access to the Ariba system located at www.supplier.acc.co.nz.

Please note there will be no tender for you to view until you are invited by ACC to access the RFP event.

RFP questions and responses

The attached documents contain questions received from suppliers to the RFP and ACCs responses. These will be issued each week on Friday while the RFP is open for submissions.

ACC contact details

Questions

As from 1 March, if you have any questions about the RFP contact Peter Campbell on the following email: peter.campbell@acc.co.nz.

Questions can be sent at anytime and an updated list of questions and answers will be sent out once a week.

Last updated: 10 April 2012